


They Come At Night

by amyfortuna



Category: Frontier Wolf - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Angst, Kissing, M/M, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-08
Updated: 2014-06-08
Packaged: 2018-02-03 21:14:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1757203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amyfortuna/pseuds/amyfortuna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The zombie hoards batter at the gate of Alexios' new command, and Alexios battles with his feelings about Cunorix.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Come At Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [havisham](https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/gifts).



"They come at night," Hilarion said, and his face was quite, quite serious. "Not every night, and not just at night, but on bad nights you can hear them battering the gates and the walls from sunset onward. You must never be caught out after dark, unless you have one of the people of the tribes with you."

"What can the tribes do?" I shook my head. Of all the tales I'd heard of the frontier and its Wolves, this was the most frightening and the least credible. I wondered if Hilarion was telling an elaborate joke, a bit of fun to mock the new, naive, commander. 

And yet I could hear it - the sound of body after body throwing itself against the hard stones of the wall and the yielding wood of the gate. 

"They have a strange magic, a green fire that burns at the borders of their villages when their priest calls it up. And they know every way to kill these creatures."

"What are the ways you know?" I felt it was important to ask the practical questions first in the face of an unlikely fear. 

"Fire is best. Burn the whole body down to ash. Do not leave one limb intact. The best way after that is to bash their skulls in. Destroy the head entirely." Hilarion's voice was ruthlessly matter-of-fact. He did not sound afraid, which was good, because I was about the ask the one question that put the fear inside of me like nothing else could do. I only hoped that my voice would not waver. 

"If they catch you, what do they do?" My voice sounded steady enough to my own ears, but now the pounding on the walls was relentless and a low shuffling growl could be heard in the darkening air. The air, too, was now filled with the stench of them - a thousand rotting bodies, groaning as they pressed against the fort's walls, vainly attempting to reach the living souls inside. 

"That depends how hungry they are. If they are truly hungry they devour you alive. You are torn to pieces without a chance to escape. If they are not so hungry, you might escape. For a little while."

I could feel myself go white. "What do you mean, for a little while?"

He turned to face me now instead of looking off into the distance. Instead of measuring the tenor of the attacking hordes tonight, I realised. "Sir, if they bite you, if they so much as graze you and draw blood, no matter how small the wound, you cannot escape. You will become like them. It may take an hour or a day or a week, but you will succumb. The strongest men have."

I still fought to keep the fear from my voice. "I shall do my very best never to encounter these at close quarters, then." I paused, took a breath. "Do they have a name?"

"The Tribes have given them many names, such as the Night-Eaters, the Dead-Who-Walk, the Brains-Seekers, the Ones-Once-People, but, sir --", he gave me a flash of a grin at this, "we call them the Shufflers. This is our advantage. They don't move fast."

\-----

It was safer to venture out in winter than in the summer months, Hilarion explained, as the Shufflers tended to move even more slowly and many of them did not move at all when it was cold. So it was on a day in early spring that I ventured out to find my wolf in Cunorix's company.

"Which direction shall we go?" Cunorix asked as he mounted his horse that day.

"Let us go west and north toward the ancient wall and Credigone," I said. 

"Very well," Cunorix said, but there was a flash in his eye of something dangerous and bright. We followed the water up and back into the wild country, until the scent was caught. 

"He's making for Credigone and the Old Wall," Cunorix shouted, panting with the chase. "It's wolf country up there, and wilder too. The Dead-Who-Walk may walk by day there!"

I dug my heels in. The fever of the chase was upon me now and Shufflers or no, I was going to get my wolf. "Let's not delay then!" I shouted back, and Cunorix gave a high-pitched, gleeful yell before digging his own heels in and speeding past me on his horse. 

The wolf turned at bay in the ruins of an old signal station and leaped at me, eyes wide. I mind how his breath smote me even as my spear smote him, and with my dagger I jumped down from my horse and finished him. 

Later, with the wolfskin taken, and the bannoch cakes shared between us, Cunorix and I lay back on the wide stones of the ruins and looked up at the skies together. We had laughed together, and something more had fallen between us, connected us, and I wanted to connection to last. 

But Cunorix grew warier as the day began to wane. "We should beware," he said as we gathered up our things to take back. "There is a foul taste in the air."

We had barely finished dragging the dogs away from the carcass when they appeared. Only two, shuffling slowly toward us from the depths of the ruins. 

"Be careful!" Cunorix shouted. "We have no fire! Don't let them touch you!"

"How do we defeat them with only swords, spears, and bows?" I asked but Cunorix was already fitting an arrow to his bow and I noticed that a rope was tied to the arrow. 

"Take the head," he said even as he shot. The arrow pierced the throat of the one on the left, and he quickly gathered up the end of the rope and climbed the nearby tree. A study branch hung about seven feet up, and he wrapped the rope around the branch, pulling and pulling. The Shuffler was pulled irrevocably upward, and as its feet left the ground, I heard a hideous crack. But it was not the branch, it was the creature's neck snapping. It slumped forward, limp.

The other Shuffler was advancing on me. I drew my sword, and encountered no resistance as I decapitated the creature. 

"Back away from it," Cunorix said, and I made haste to do so. A green fluid exploded from the creature's head and I turned away. It missed me, but where it touched the grass a hissing sound arose and the grass went brown. 

"Yes, you can do it that way," Cunorix said, leaping down from the tree. "But this is why fire is better, or failing fire, trapping the creature." He gestured to the trapped one. "It cannot move now, although it has not really been destroyed." The creature still hung limp; there was no sign of movement. 

It was then, strangely, under the shade of that foul thing, that Cunorix kissed me. A strange and wild kiss, almost a bite, it was, and all the feelings I had felt about him that I had not understood before I understood now. My heart fluttered wildly in his arms and in that moment, I would have done anything to keep us there forever. 

But of course we had to ride back. And I tried to keep him for the night, phrased it delicately about the hour growing late, and he could eat and sleep with us. He would not though, and I knew then what I did not wish to know - that although he felt what was between us, he could not give in to it. For he was of the Tribes, and I a Roman, and both of us commanders, and one day we might meet in battle. One day, all the shuffling hordes could be put to dreadful use against the Wolves. 

One horrible day. I can remember even now how I sensed it, felt it. And that day did come, but that is a different tale.


End file.
